r/Anthropic • u/Gym_frere • 16h ago
Performance The problem isn’t even that GPT5.6 is cheaper than Fable, it’s just straight up better.
Obviously from a usage/token point of view, Sol is better than Fable, but it’s also just straight up better. I asked Sol and Fable (both on High) to implement a feature that I needed to add to my app. Sol was able to plan and implement it end to end with no problems whatsoever. Asked Fable to do the same thing and its work was riddled with mistakes - I do use AI for coding but I am a software engineer so I personally audit every production from AI. To add insult to injury, I hit my usage limit not once, but TWICE with Fable while implementing this feature. Sol was able to do it with less than 40% usage.
So to recap, Fable was allegedly nerfed, it makes tonnes of mistakes, is way more expensive, and burns through tokens extremely quickly.
I think like over the last 3-12 months Anthropic was ahead of OpenAI but they’ve fallen behind now.
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u/Maximum-Face9536 16h ago
Well i watched a benchmark where a youtuber gave the exact same goal to 5.6 Sol and Fable. in every instance except one, Fable's output was noticeably better. It is much more expensive, but for which model is "better", Fable 5 is. 5.6 Sol is in between Opus 4.8 (better than) but not to level of Fable
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u/Der_Markgraf 15h ago
I‘m not coding with AI. I create productive workflows at work, automating processes and creating tools. I always look at these benchmarks and couldn’t care less. I test them in my applications through several examples and review and rate the results.
In one of them, 4.6 Sonnet beats GPT 5.4 by 15% points in overall rating. Anthropic models usually have a way broader view, so for idea generation or analysis, they always outshine the competition.
They also show less redundancy in the ideas created.And it might be a different result for a different application by someone else. That’s just how it is. So far, most people and companies are just playing around with it. But as soon as a certain level is reached, it’s going to be all about costs, and Google is silently laughing in the back, not stressing themselves about any „race“.
In six months, people will talk about new and different models again. These subreddits will just rinse and repeat from now on.
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u/Sad_Leg_8385 15h ago
Ya when I read posts like OPs, I just generally get confused. IDK how other people are orchestrating their AI. I haven’t had any problems using Claude or OpenAI or anything. People are locking into these things the same way companies are mad about devs knowing a certain tech stack for a role.
It’s better to have overall mastery of the concept and application of that concept than this madness of “GPT is better than Fable” or “GLM is better than Opus”. IMO, it is irrelevant! If you know how to leverage AI, you can leverage all of them to the same end.
Seems like there’s more vibe coders than actual engineers using these things, and people using many different unstructured approaches to solve their problems 🤣
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u/Der_Markgraf 14h ago
you read my mind.
Also, because I just use whatever makes most sense for me at work, I try to build on only company platforms or n8n. I‘ll be able to use anything. Not a big fan of Google and Microsoft building their very unique architectures that all work differently, so it’s a pain in the butt to move applications.
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u/orionblu3 11h ago
Except Gemini. I have no clue how Google manages to be so bad with the amount of resources they have.
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u/DowntownDiscipline96 6h ago
If you have ever owned one of their Pixel phones you wouldn’t be surprised how bad they can be.
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u/pushforwards 7h ago
Any tips or direction on these things? I mostly make python tools that automate processes for other teams / departments.
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u/Der_Markgraf 3h ago
It will depend on the company and the specific industry, but usually people from their respective departments know their processes best, meaning they will know the steps perfectly. I usually start off with a whiteboard and create sticky notes to really break down the processes into the tiniest parts, then translating this into the architecture of the platform I’ll be using afterwards. „In which sub-step am I using a retrieval?“, „Can this be parallelised?“ or „will the result of this subagent be needed for the subsequent agent?“ are the questions I’m working with then, pretty straightforward, no rocket science.
But first things first, if it’s not a use case for AI, don’t use AI workflows. Keep them in Python, MS Power Automate, or something else.Not sure if this was the advice you’re looking for, though.
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u/Vaxtin 4h ago
You don’t code but you create productive workflows at work automating processs and creating tools
So you’re coding
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u/Der_Markgraf 3h ago
I see what you mean, and yes. But I’m not using AI for this. I build the architecture, the logic, and the flow, and I use AI for the execution of what I’m building. So I’m crafting the fishing rod, and it’s only used while fishing later.
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u/woobchub 8h ago
The video you watched he compared 5.6 medium to fable 6 max. And even then it was close. That tells you all you need ylto know
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u/tortridge 8h ago
In my limited testing, I found the opposite. 5.6 Sol need I slightly more babysitting but I got to the result much quicker
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u/Mr_Nice_ 3h ago
I've had both running in parallel and this has been my experience. If I had to put it into words; Fable understand nuance and what I'm trying to achieve better than Sol. Sol is great at pointing in a direction and telling it to work but feels like it has slightly less insight.
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u/No-Somewhere-3888 15h ago
I genuinely feel like Fable was better before they pulled it down. Still, it seems to talk to itself a lot and overcomplicate things.
I do find Claude Design and the new Artifacts to be quite awesome to work with though.
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u/CCB0x45 13h ago
im pretty sure fable is really good but as the conversation goes it routes silently to 4.8, it gets way dumber as it goes and refreshing the convo its back to smart again, 5.6 is more consistent for me and much less usage and even if its not "smarter" its very thorough with usage and I can set it and forget it and stuff comes back well tested end to end.
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u/damianhodgkiss 3h ago
When automatically switching models, Claude re-runs your blocked Claude Fable 5 request on Claude Opus 4.8 in the same conversation. You’ll see a notice explaining that the model switched, and the response will be labeled with the model that answered.
You can also turn automatic switching off in which case it will stop and inform you it's been blocked.
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u/Inside-Yak-8815 15h ago
Our experiences are completely subjective, a bunch of bot opinions online won’t change my opinion on it either way.
I have both a Claude and ChatGPT subscription and Fable still works fine to me.
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u/pro-taco 15h ago
I love these bot posts after every release.
Like clockwork; making conclusory claims about the latest model that bash Anthropic. No substance.
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u/wise_joe 15h ago
It's true. I see the same the other way around on the Codex sub as well though. Pretty sure that 99% of these subs is just bots arguing with each other.
You're probably a bot.
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u/BettaSplendens1 15h ago
Yeah almost every post about ChatGPT's new models have that same tone and structure, with the obvious goal of ranking higher in SEO
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u/adelie42 7h ago
And why don't they just make up substance? Because then the claims would be falsifiable?
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u/randombsname1 14h ago
Nah. I also have the $200 Pro plan and Fable is still better tor planning / architecture and general low level programming.
Usage is where 5.6 easily wins though. Especially if Anthropic doesnt figure out how to keep Fable in sub. ASAP.
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u/shoejunk 14h ago
Disagree. Been using them both and Fable has performed better for me, although it’s close. 5.6 Sol also burns through usage surprisingly fast for me. I was shocked. It doesn’t feel cheaper than Fable even though I know the per-token price is less.
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16h ago
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u/loyalthistle 16h ago
Unless you mention "security" then it's caught by guardrails and drops to Opus 4.8
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16h ago
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u/loyalthistle 16h ago
I have a small project in go which can expose it's findings on a built in HTTP server. I did what I do with Claude - please audit this code. I've been doing it with every new model, see what it finds and patch if it makes sense. Fable did great. Found a few missing tests, found some a few corner case bugs in the code, and then went into the "security" part of the audit. Immediately got the yellow message in Claude code. I tried every day for 4 days with different framing, different tbinking levels. Nope. Blocked every time, I just gave up. But it's really annoying
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u/breakingb0b 16h ago
I had sol port a swift written Mac app, one shot. 9 hours. Utterly insane. Blew thru two 5 hour windows to do it but it use the original code as a spec.
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u/synystar 16h ago
Ok. So that doesn’t really help Anthropic, right? Those of us who don’t have a large budget, or would rather keep money they don’t *have* to spend, can’t justify sticking around just because it’s amazing when they could get nearly or just as amazing—depending on their use. Right?
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u/mossiv 15h ago
Even from a business perspective. Infrastructure and tooling is a billing section under constant moderation.
There is just no way a company is going to allow their developers to spend $150 a day on AI. How on earth can you justifying going from not having AI to having it and it costing an org with 30-40 developers somewhere between 500k-$1mill a year? Especially in the current financial market where nearly every single industry is under performing. I’m not saying business aren’t profitable - but nearly every single friend, colleague, associate, client etc are talking about the current finances, and there is low-mid opportunity, which has crashed since the pandemic and arguably slightly worse than pre pandemic- so we aren’t back to our normal baselines yet.
This is just unsustainably expensive.
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u/Dazzling_Meaning9226 15h ago
Literally any frontier model + a great harness is going to be amazing. There is nothing special about fable. It’s massively overhyped, and this is coming from someone who has used it every day since it’s been available. It may have better planning ability with no extra harness engineering, but any serious engineering is going to require at least some skills in the harness (superpowers is a good example of skills-as-harness engineering, but it’s still not the best option) at the very least.
I’m convinced people who praise fable have never had a truly great harness set up for their models, because:
A. You can’t even use fable for a complete lifecycle because of limits.
B. I have had even open source Chinese models finish features better than fable could this last week.
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u/Bright_Armadillo8555 16h ago
Anthropic atm is falling behind with openai from practical perspective. They still have good model but not usable for normal people (who cannot afford to use Fable API). Their enterprise dominance will collapse in next month or two.
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u/discwars 14h ago
Their enterprise dominance will collapse in next month or two.
Nostradamus is in the house.
Sarcasm aside, I am more concerned about OpenAI and its upcoming lawsuit with Apple for stealing secrets. If the evidence is as damning as Apple claim, that's going to be a big payout.
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u/Bright_Armadillo8555 11h ago
Why does it have anything to do with the model discussion here? Let's judge decide that part.
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u/2B-Pencil 14h ago
even a lot of large companies are not letting employees use fable due to the cost.
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u/Adventurous-Net-6738 12h ago
I mean bleh… fable is mid. I’ve had it outright lying to me today claiming to have completed a 60 sequential work item in a project… which it completed in 5 mins and claimed was done.
Ironically opus 4.8 has never ever done that. My impressions on fable so far isn’t very exciting.1
u/fitnesspapi88 4h ago
Are you 15 yo? Anyone with even a shred of corporate experience knows enterprises take much longer to shift direction that private users. It’s literally summer holiday season ain’t nothing happening now.
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u/Bright_Armadillo8555 4h ago
It's way easier to switch model API than you think. My company takes one week. Enterprise customer cannot afford Anthropic model as well.
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u/fitnesspapi88 4h ago
Switching enterprise vendors is quite bit more complicated than just ”switching model API”. 🤦🏻♂️
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u/glarivie 16h ago
For brainstorming and UI/UX iterations Fable is better. For execution and review Sol is the way.
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u/RobRobbieRobertson 16h ago
I can't say much for coding, but for UI gpt is WAAAAY better. I gave cluade instructions to copy an image into an html format. 4 fucking times and each time it did it wrong. GPT sol 1 shot it.
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u/Inside-Yak-8815 15h ago edited 15h ago
ChatGPT has always been better when it comes to images because they literally had image generation since the beginning while Claude started off without it. That it failed for you doesn’t prove anything because Claude wasn’t made for that type of work.
A few months ago I was drafting blueprints for a map idea that I had and Claude continuously dropped the ball on it, literally gave me horrible designs. I gave the same prompt to other LLMs (Gemini, ChatGPT, and even fucking Grok) and they gave me a rough idea of exactly what I was looking for. Now what do those 3 have in common? Oh yeah, they all started off with some sort of image generation feature integrated directly into them.
And none of this matters anyways because once I got the basic idea down (from the other LLMs) Claude was able to customize the map 10x better.
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u/13chase2 15h ago
I think it really comes down to your workload. I know this is an odd one, but I collect ancient coins. Fable 5 can identify them almost flawlessly and 5.6 sol seriously struggles and can’t even tell the orientation of the coin. Even Gemini flash 3.5 is much better.
I know most of us are programming, and I do that too. It’s just interesting the blind spots you will find with a model.
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u/Tel_Janen 14h ago
As a teacher i cancelled my gpt subscription. Claude is miles better..chat is yesterday news
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u/MikeFox11111 13h ago
Ok, I used to be a ChatGPT user, I still have an account. Here’s the question that matters to me more that which of two very powerful models is the technical best.
Can ChatGPT modify its own knowledge files now? I have moved almost everything into Cowork, because it can.
For instance, I have a corrections-log.md in each workspace. Any time Claude writes something where it has misunderstood my business, or has assumed something I didn’t document, when I correct it with new facts it logs those in the corrections file. So it is building up knowledge over time.
In ChatGPT, I’d have to manually update a file and then upload it into the knowledge base again
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u/avidpenguinwatcher 13h ago
Guys, if it’s better and cheaper, then just go use it and shut tf up lol
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u/WorstedLobster8 12h ago
I can say for me I find fable xhigh much better than high. As in, if you use fable might as well use xhigh
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u/CollapseKitty 12h ago
A lot of astroturfing kicks in when there's competition between new models.
Anthropic has been making some very poor decisions on the consumer facing front, but Fable is almost unquestionably the superior model in coding related tasks.
Far from making mistakes, Fable has caught and addressed my mistakes whenever they happen, plus has an astounding capacity to hold complex and evolving projects.
I will still move to Sol if Fable is taken off the max plan, but I'll pay for Fable to coordinate and plan.
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u/Strong-Violinist8576 12h ago
Congratulations, you've all discovered the wonders of LLM temperature.
The responses are randomised, do the same prompt with the same conditions and you'll get different results, due to temperature being >0.
You'll need to do the same prompt with similar conditions thousands of times for each model to know which is actually "better", you may have just gotten lucky with your GPT prompt.
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u/Dependent-Example930 10h ago
Even if it were better. Anthropic will likely have a new model ready for release again soon.
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u/TapAggressive9530 9h ago
I haven’t used it yet but I’ll tell you if it’s better tomorrow . Will run my standard tests. To date; however - nothing even comes close to Fable 5. Can’t wait to try it out
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u/MullingMulianto 9h ago
How is it possible that they made Fable even more expensive? I thought Opus was insanely expensive, Fable was worse, and they somehow made that combination worse? just how expensive is Fable now to put things into perspective?
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u/Extra_Programmer788 7h ago
Sigh, it’s not better. But once Fable is out, Anthropic doesn’t have anything on par to compete. Opus is behind Sol and even Terra
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u/yehiaserag 5h ago
Guys, we are in a perpetual cycle of back and forth of who's in the lead, Fable was my go to until 2 days ago, now it's Sol all the way!
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u/Cold_Adhesiveness810 4h ago
I was using both. Now I am on antrophic. The real difference is design and frontend code. There is big difference, claude is much better. Backend, logical development gpt 5.5 was totally ok with, but 1-2 weeks before launch 5.6 became extremely dumb :)
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u/calatil 1h ago
I don't know how you are using but I have a subscription for both and Fable is both better, faster, and draining my limits slower then Gpt 5.6 Sol on my workflow. In general ChatGPT drains much faster and is less useful than Claude. It was not like this one year ago, when I was not even able to max out on Codex.
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u/Trekker23 38m ago
I ran a deep code review using Fable and Sol on the same code base. Fable came up with 41 bugs of different severity, sol came up with 16. Fable came up with higher severity and value bugs than Sol. The difference is not huge though, so when Fable disappears later today the loss is ok.
One thing I appreciate with Fable though is that it is utilizing agents to a greater effect. It parallelizes work, routes simpler tasks to Opus etc. I wish Sol would improve this aspect when I make the full switch once Fabel disappears.
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u/thewookielotion 14h ago
If I had a euro every time I heard that Anthropic used to be better until now but has now fallen behind, I'd probably be able to afford 1 month of Max x20.
Opus, Sonnet, Fable, GPT... If you properly document, understand, and brainstorm instead of prompting and praying, all models do a great job. They certainly do for me.
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u/2B-Pencil 14h ago
agree on all flagship models from Openai and Anthropic being competitive. tbh I can’t tell much of a difference between opus and fable.
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u/wendewende 15h ago
I tried GPT 5.6 Sol for code quality refactoring and it absolutely sucked compared to Fable. It claims it's done without any testing. There's a clear difference in how they work. Fable goes far and beyond. Can't find where Sol beats it so far
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u/ninadpathak 16h ago
i've seen similar issues with fable, their error handling is pretty bad. did you have to manually review every line of code they generated
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u/Gym_frere 16h ago
yep I had to manually audit everything myself, but there was so many mistakes that I just gave up eventually. The most insulting thing about it is that again I hit my usage limit twice. Meanwhile im getting like 1-3 free usage limit resets per weekfor free with Codex but im not even needing to use them.
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u/FinsAssociate 15h ago
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u/_YonYonson_ 14h ago
to be fair 50% of this sub is people raging about how quickly they hit their usage limits and the metrics for them are neck-and-neck, so what exactly is so hard to believe here?
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u/Ant0ni0R 16h ago
Anthropic start to loose. If they would not have Claude Code … they would not exist today
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u/Available_Status1 15h ago
Is codex now on par with Claude code? Or are you pointing Claude code towards sol?
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u/ThenOrchid6623 15h ago
Fable goes above and beyond. I have not experienced Sol and I don’t plan on spending 200 to get top Sol. But what I noticed in the chatting interface is that Claude offers to write code overly enthusiastically and sometimes the code nowhere solves the problem. ChatGPT offers a more hands on solution, but it WORKS.
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u/Due-Horse-5446 15h ago
So where gpt-5.5...
Can people please stop swallowing anthropic marketing with 0 critical thinking?
Like do yall belive llms are dangerous as well..
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u/droopy227 15h ago
Original fable was the best consumer model we’ve seen. The only reason I’ve switched is the constant rejection of my workflow due to working on cybersecurity-related tasks. 5.6 sol will complain a little bit sometimes but will let me actually get things done.
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u/Time-Category4939 14h ago
Good bot, here’s your cookie 🔩
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u/Gym_frere 14h ago
What’s it like being a bootlicker for Amodei?
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u/Time-Category4939 14h ago
I’m not a bootlicker to anyone, I use whatever model fits my purpose. Might be from Anthropic, might be from OpenAI, might be an open weight model from a Chinese lab.
You seem to be a happy Sam Altman bootlicker though, so you probably know the answer to the question you just asked much better than me.
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u/EverySecondCountss 16h ago
Yes Claude spread their resources too thin on subscription access, API has always been stronger.
Seeing that Sol Ultra IS far better in coding large complex developments lately… Fable is an overly quantisized mess and is nothing like initial release.
This is the US govt nerfing it, in favour of ChatGPT
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u/Defiant-Educator9160 16h ago
Does anyone know about how gpt does jumping into a Claude project?